SENSORY ALIEN HAND SYNDROME - CASE-REPORT AND REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

An 81 year old right handed woman developed a left alien hand syndrome characterised by involuntary movements of choking and hitting the fac e, neck, and shoulder. The patient showed multiple disorders of primar y sensation, sensory processing, hemispatial attention, and visual ass ociation, as well as a combination of sensory, optic, and cerebellar a taxia (triple ataxia) of the left arm in the absence of motor neglect or hemiparesis. Imaging studies disclosed subacute infarction in the r ight thalamus, hippocampus, inferior temporal lobes, splenium of corpu s callosum, and occipital lobe due to right posterior cerebral artery occlusion. This rare syndrome should be considered as a ''sensory'' or ''posterior'' form of the alien hand syndrome, to be distinguished fr om the ''motor'' or ''anterior'' form described more commonly.